Inland Lakes tries to get grip on budget details

Saturday

Jun 21, 2014 at 12:01 AM

Kortny Hahn

Inland Lakes Schools recently held a budget workshop to review changes to the 2013-2014 budget, which have happened since the budget was brought before the board in April.Superintendent Fred Osborn said what was brought to the board was not the whole budget and had more detail.“It’s part of the reason we have a hard time budgeting, because we are on version H and every one of those versions only shows changes since the last version,” said Osborn. “So when you look at increased or decreased state revenue, there’s a couple of minor changes that primarily come from the state.”One of the increases in revenue Osborn outlined in the version of the agenda he presented was the amount of money coming into the school for Medicaid billing. This was from a check the district was not expecting to get from the Cheboygan-Otsego-Presque Isle Education Service Distict, COP-ESD, for $22,490. “What that is, they take care of billing any Medicaid approved services that some of their itinerant staff provide and then they filter that back to us,” said Osborn. “One of those things we can’t really count on in the budget, but we are grateful to get it.”There were also several decreases in revenue Osborn pointed out, including a decrease in their miscellaneous revenue. This had to do with insurance claims made this year for issues happening at the school.“We were under the impression that we would actually get that check from the insurance company yet this fiscal year,” said Osborn. “We should have known better with insurance companies, so we had credited that. Now we are not getting it until next fiscal year, so she had to debit it, and she will credit it in the next budget.”There were other decreases in what the school was expecting to bring in due to all the athletic events, which were cancelled due to inclement weather. Added expenses also took from the revenue, including needing to add more hours for counselor Erica Jarema. Jarema was needed to work with administrative assistant Tammy Gable, secondary school principal Melanie Allen and athletic director Ryan Svoboda to finish the school schedule for next year.“We’re close but we wanted to budget for a few more hours, to get that done,” said Osborn.According to Osborn, the budget is fairly close to where it was expected to be when it was looked at it in April. He wanted to wait until they were a little closer to the end of the fiscal year before cleaning up some of the line items, which were unnecessary.The school board also had a chance to look through the proposed 2014-2015 fiscal year budget, which is still being built based on Governor Rick Snyder’s proposed numbers. Although it shows an anticipated drop in enrollment of 40 students, Osborn thinks that is a little aggressive and the school shouldn’t lose that many students.“Again, you build budgets on worst-case scenario and you hope for best-case scenario,” said Osborn. “Last year, the budget you approved was estimated to have 758 students and we ended up with 781.”Osborn said much of the governor’s budget for schools are operating on the principal where schools on the lower end of the funding are receiving $111 per student, including Inland Lakes, and those at that topping the list are receiving $55.“So, where we end up, and this is a little bit scary, because where we end up with is a deficit budget to the tune of just above $400,000,” said Osborn. “I am not real happy about bringing a budget to you that has that level of deficit spending.”According to Osborn, there are too many unanswered questions, and he is sure there will be more changes made to the budget before June 30. He needs to be proactive when it comes to getting the results from the governor’s budget to the board and what the implications for the school’s budget will be.“One of the things the board has asked me to do is to maintain a minimum fund equity of $350,000,” said Osborn. “Fortunately, with a deficit budget, we are still at that $350,000 mark.”This fund equity represents about 5.4 percent of the revenue which will be coming into the school next year, or 5.1 percent of expenses next year. “Again, those are numbers, which are based on some variables that we are doing our best to get a handle on,” said Osborn.